Demon's Run- Where a Good Man Goes to War
by AllyPotter1196
Summary: This is the story of the Battle of Demon's Run- and not the one that everyone has heard of. This is a companion to my last Doctor Who fic, 'Doctors, Rivers, Jacks and Defenders' which does not need to be read to understand this. Pairings- 11/River, Amy/Rory, Jack/OC


**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of the characters within it, I only own the story line and my OCs. **

**A/N: Hey guys, this is part of my Doctor Who universe the first of which was Doctors, Rivers, Jacks and Defenders. This can be read alone but reading the first piece may be useful.**

**Please Read and Review guys!**

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><p><strong>Demon's Run- Where a Good Man goes to War<strong>

_Demon's Run when a Good Man goes to War._

_Night will fall and drown the sun,_

_When a Good Man goes to War._

_Friendship dies and true love lies,_

_Night will fall and the dark will rise, _

_When a Good Man goes to War._

_Demon's Run, but count the cost,_

_For the battle's won, but the child is lost_

(Steven Moffat, 'When a Good Man goes to War'~ Dorium Maldovar and Dr. River Song)

The Doctor stared at the mirror in the TARDIS, but he couldn't bring himself to care about his dishevelled appearance. His hair was lank and greasy as if it hadn't been washed in a while. Which it hadn't. His eyes had dark bags under them as if he hadn't slept in an age. Which he hadn't. His bow-tie, was crooked and unwashed, yes, his precious bow-tie. All in all, the Doctor knew that he looked pretty terrible.

The reason for all of this could be summed up in one word. **Manhattan**.

For most of the inhabitants of the planet, Earth New York and by extension Manhattan was a great place to visit. For the Doctor, however it was now synonymous with heartbreak and pain. Manhattan was the city which took his best friends, **_his family_** away from him.

The Doctor hated Manhattan. But he hated even more than losing his family was the man that it had brought out of him. He was a good man but suddenly he had lost his way.

A familiar scene from his past came to mind.

Demon's Run.

The poem.

Of a good man going to war.

He remembered all too well the cost of the battle at Demon's Run. He remembered what his wife had told him, that he was falling down a dangerous path, one that if he was not careful would destroy him and the ones that he loved.

"Don't travel alone, Doctor," the words of River Song reverberated through his brain.

His wife had meant well. He needed to be in the company of humans, they stopped him from being too stupid and for that he was grateful. But right now the Doctor could not see the point and he certainly could not think that a human would be able to help him.

It was impossible. But then again, she was his Impossible Girl.

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><p>Clara Oswald sighed as she looked across the park at where Angie and Artie were playing a game of what looked to be truth or dare. She knew that she should stop it but she was feeling particularly apathetic, she always did on this day.<p>

The anniversary of Demon's Run.

Since she was a young girl, barely old enough to have sense, Clara's favourite bedtime story was the story of Demon's Run. Not the original but the second time the prophecy was fulfilled and this time in its entirety.

Her mother had never complained, she had always obligingly told her daughter the tale, in fact it was told so often that Clara had it memorised by the time that she was 6.

Clara had asked a very long time ago what the anniversary of Demon's Run was, and her mother had told her a date. Ever since then Clara always would celebrate it, it was the one day of the year that she allowed herself to wallow and mope.

Today was that day.

Clara had always had a morbid fascination with the prophecy of Demon's Run. She could remember her mother being reluctant to tell an inquisitive four-year old version of her what the prophecy meant but her mother being who she was had told her anyway. Clara had never forgotten what her mother had said that day.

_"__Demon's Run… it's a complicated space-time event," the older woman had started with this._

_"__What does that mean," Clara had asked, she had still been so naïve and now looking back on it, Clara recognised the slightly jealous look her mother gave her, her mother envied her naivety and so did she._

_"__It means that by the Prophecy of Demon's Run being repeated as many times as it has, it has become a fixed point in the timestreams to try to stop it would cause the Death of Time."_

_The look that Clara had seen her mother give was one of nostalgia; it was only now, all these years later when she herself was travelling with the Doctor that she learnt about the Death of Time. _

_"__The prophecy foretells the loss of innocence and goodness, Clara," her mother had told her. _

_Clara had nodded, pretending to understand. She really didn't though, but now older she realised that her mother had always known that Clara was still too young to understand but it was a testament to the sort of parent that her mother was that she had still taken the time to explain it to her. _

But now Clara understood. Oh, how well she understood. She wanted to run to her mother and beg her to make it all better but she couldn't. She wanted her mother's comfort but she couldn't. For today in the Doctor's timestream she had seen a Good Man go to War. And it scared her.

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><p>River Song was not a woman of many regrets but one thing that she would always regret was Demon's Run.<p>

As a young woman, a woman studying to get her doctorate, River had always been obsessed with the poem of Demon's Run. Now, she wished that she had understood it better. That she didn't have to hurt her husband as much as she did that day.

She knew that she had hurt him by calling him a soldier, reminding him of the Time War and all the fallen of Gallifrey. She had known all too well what sort of psychological pain that would wage on him but she needed him to see, _see her_.

And he had seen her.

Melody Pond.

River Song.

Oh, how he had seen.

But then she remembered the other version of herself, the one that would face the trials and tribulations of being the Silence's puppet and all the other things that were now in her past.

River Song hated Demon's Run for a different reason to most. It was the start for her. The start of many years of pain and suffering, but she also felt affection for it.

The prophecy had meant that she would be lost but it also allowed her to find love.

Her Doctor.

And that was worth any and all of the pain that she had suffered all because of the Prophecy of Demon's Run.

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><p>As the middle child, well the technical middle child of three, or even four sisters, Lucy Song had always anticipated playing the mediator, but somehow that had never happened. She had ended up being the one that everyone watched out for. But maybe that was because she was the most sensitive and yes, perhaps a little daft.<p>

Lucy knew that she took too much after her old man. The Doctor was a great man, but Lucy, well she was a young woman and she was not seen as favourably.

Lucy had always felt sorry for herself, until her fourth regeneration when she had seen something. Something that had been kept hidden from her for many years by her youngest sister. She had seen the true nature of the Prophecy of Demon's Run. They had always taken the child to be her mother, Melody Pond, River Song. But it wasn't. Lucy wasn't sure why she hadn't seen it before but the Prophecy applied to her little sister not her mother. For Melody Pond had rescued herself by regenerating but her little sister, Amelia or as she was known, Amy, had not regenerated, she had taken it all and had been lost.

Lucy had always admired her older siblings. Jenny for her vivacious personality and Abigail for her sharp tongue. But she had always thought that her younger sister was well, a bit of a let-down, for one she was all wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey, but secondly she always seemed to be a bit on guard even around her own family. She supposed that they had all taken it at face value but now that the veneer had been peeled away, Lucy could see all too clearly.

She suddenly found herself appreciating the saying, ignorance is bliss.

Lucy vowed to herself as she looked at the memory, she still wasn't sure whose it was, but she vowed that the next time she saw her baby sister that she would make it up to her.

For the cost of Demon's Run was far too great.

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><p>As a child in the Boeshane valleys, Jack Harkness had always been intrigued by the Prophecy of Demon's Run, but when he met his wife that had changed.<p>

He had hated it with all of the fiery passion that he had used to hold for the many conquests that he flirted with. Of course, Jack had bedded a fair few of both sexes and certainly from many species, but he had known his wife from childhood, their timelines at the point had been a bit messed up, but he remembered always knowing her hatred for the Silence.

He had never really thought about it until one day he had visited Dorium Maldovar and asked him about the Prophecy. Dorium had laughed and told him to ask his wife, because she would understand and explain it much better than he ever could.

Jack had never really asked about his wife's past, before she had married him. Neither of them had ever really needed that before, they knew enough about one another, and maybe a little too much on her part. She was a time-traveller so she had met future versions of him but he never really knew and she always laughingly told him 'Spoilers'. But for once he wasn't going to take that for an answer.

What she had told him shocked and horrified him and he had suddenly understood all too well. But his admiration for her had been amped up considerably.

Jack Harkness was a man, an immortal and he honestly thought that he'd never meet someone with more worries and pain than himself until he met the Doctor but that all paled in comparison to the wonderfully imperfect woman that he had married.

As much as Jack hated Demon's Run he also thanked it for his wife…

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><p>Abigail Song was the oldest of the River's daughters, she was the second oldest of the Doctor's and as such she had always seen herself as the apple of their eyes and she had been. All the way up until her youngest sister was created, Abby could remember being relieved when the baby was lost to Demon's Run.<p>

Abby had never thought that the cost of winning the battle there had been too high, she was relieved.

Abby had always been a selfish girl but with her two siblings, Jenny and Lucy it was easy. Jenny was older and could take care of herself and did not demand too much of their parents' time and attention. Lucy, though younger was content to take more of a back seat role, so Abby always got her way.

She had always treated her youngest sister badly and because their parents so seldom saw their youngest child it was all too easy for Abby to hurt her little sister. She wasn't heartless but she had always loved seeing how far she could push the child lost at Demon's Run.

But it wasn't until her last moments when she really needed help that she cursed Demon's Run. For the one person that could help her was her youngest sister, the only one of them to be 100% Time Lord but she knew that her sister would not come, not for her.

And for the first and only time in her life, Abigail Song realised too late just how high the cost of the loss at Demon's Run was.

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><p>Jenny had never really thought about Demon's Run, until she did. She had always thought of the Universe as having a plan, and always being fair in some way or another, that was until she met her youngest sister at Demon's Run.<p>

Jenny had always been great at running, it was after all what her parents had done best but she could not run from Demon's Run. She had known that people lied and died there but she had never thought of it in human terms until she had to fight in that battle. She had seen the darkness and the pain and suffering but most of all she saw just how much her youngest sister would have to suffer for she was the child that was lost.

Sometimes Jenny wished that the prophecy really had meant her mother, because River Song was a fixed point. But it wasn't. Madame Kovarian had destroyed another childhood and built an even better psychopath and assassin using her little sister, and it killed Jenny to watch this happen.

Jenny was as much a traveller as her little sister so the two often met on their travels, but it became increasingly obvious to the older of the two that her little sister was becoming more and more jaded as the time went on. But she still dreamed that her sister would miraculously gain naivety and be young and innocent like Lucy. Knowing all too well that in would be in vain.

For in Demon's Run the battle was won but the War was lost.

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><p>Dorium Maldovar was many things. He was a salesman for one and the second he was actually a good man. There were things that Dorium regretted but he regretted Demon's Run most of all.<p>

The second time weirdly enough had been worse. The first time he was decapitated, the second he ended up owing a never-ending supply of debts to the most dangerous woman in the Universe. The Doctor's and River's youngest daughter.

If Dorium was being honest he loved the youngest Song girl. What was there not to like? Smart, vivacious, killer smile, great body, great attitude and of course extremely pretty. But his problem was that he was guilt-stricken, he had helped turn this wonderful woman into a hardened assassin and he felt that he deserved none of the kindness she showed him, until of course she'd call in a favour at which point he would hate her.

Dorium honestly had thought that with Demon's Run being blown up that the prophecy had been fulfilled, he just hadn't considered that because the Doctor and River were time travellers that they could have a child before River was born in terms of years.

The entire Prophecy was ridiculously wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey. It was awful. But then again so was a good man going to war.


End file.
